President Donald Trump dodged a chance Friday to condemn President Vladimir Putin over allegations that Russia has conducted espionage attacks on NATO nations.<\/p>\n
Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, brushed off a question about one such apparent incident \u2014 the discovery of explosive-laden drones<\/a> Aug. 4 at the Leipzig airport in Germany that officials have linked to Russia.<\/p>\n “I speak to him,” Trump said of the Russian leader. “I know him very well. Putin is not looking to attack NATO territory.”<\/p>\n Trump did not elaborate further on the attack or why he would be so quick to dismiss an apparent attack on a fellow member of NATO, an alliance rooted in the concept of a shared defense against Moscow.<\/p>\n The discovery of the drones packed with explosives, including one alongside a Ukrainian jet and another at a NATO logistics hub,<\/a> appear to be what European security officials have characterized as a form of hybrid warfare by Russia against nations that have supported Ukraine since Putin launched a full-scale invasion there in 2022.<\/p>\n German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is set to meet with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth<\/a> in Washington later this month, when the two men will likely discuss the attack.<\/p>\n NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte has thrown his support behind Germany and said he welcomed its retaliatory measures for the Russian attacks. Tensions between Russia and the 32-member alliance, which was created in 1949 to address threats by the Soviet Union, have grown amid plots targeting European defenses<\/a> and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n Trump’s reaction to the question about the drones comes as NATO members have questioned whether they can rely on the U.S. to come to their aid in times of need. A POLITICO poll<\/a> showed that trust in the U.S. among four key NATO allies had dropped sharply over the past year amid disputes with Washington and calls from the Trump administration to spend more on their own defense<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump, who has long expressed admiration for Putin, has repeatedly threatened to leave the alliance, accusing NATO for failing to help with the Iran war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump dodged a chance Friday to condemn President Vladimir Putin over allegations that Russia has conducted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[57,7,140,20,142,437],"class_list":["post-13138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-nato","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-trump","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}